This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Cat Out of Bag

This morning President Obama met with Democratic senators and representatives to discuss the challenges he and they face, after meeting with a similar group of Republicans a few days ago.

The atmosphere, of course was different. But one thing struck me that probably went unnoticed by most, even if it elicited audible recognition by the audience: President Obama pointed out that China is currently way ahead of the U.S. in the area of renewable energy. And he added: “But China is not a democracy.”

Together with the week-old Supreme Court decision that enhances the status of corporations as persons, leaving the door wide open for them to openly purchase elections, this is no small detail: The President failed to mention that China weathered the global economic crisis better than anyone. The reason: the Communist leadership - a handful of people - decided to create a stimulus package equal to the one Americans got after a lot of bickering and recrimination.

I’m not advocating for a totalitarian system, I’m simply pointing out that we have a sort of unofficial totali-tarian system run by big money, which makes is much more difficult for our elected representatives to behave as the founders intended them to. I’m pleased to not that calls for a constitutional convention are appearing here and there, and even if you are persuaded that principles enunciated two hundred years ago are still valid - as one comment to my latest blog Kos affirmed - the founders expressed many fears that their opus would be a Pandora’s Box, leading to situations they could not predict. So did Teddy Roosevelt. President Eisenhower, in his famous last address, was more specific and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t quote his warning about the military-industrial complex.But - as the President would say - make no mistake: democracy demands a level of ethical development (see the work of Lawrence Kohlberg), that a system based on near-total individual freedom does not foster.

Martin Jacques much talked about book entitled When China Rules the World emphasizes the revived Confucian tradition of virtue as the principal guiding China’s totalitarian rulers. In Shock Doctrine, republished on its tenth anniversary, Naomi Klein reveals the little known history of (among others, Russia’s transition to capitalism under Yeltsin.

All this should alert even the most devoted democrat, that labels are not what matter most, but actions.

Welcome to Otherjones!

As announced a month ago, henceforth I will post all my blogs here, abandoning websites that support their editors, but not their writers. I'm looking for thirty readers willing to contribute $10 a month each. They will receive an article every day in their inbox.

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’, as Chris Hedges puts it, may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

My goal is to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.
Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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P.S. I encourage you to review the archive, by clicking first on the year triangle, then on that of each month. You will find many posts from recent years still relevant today.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN did nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons
why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover, getting a unique window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who never appear on our own msm.

I intend to try, insofar as my time permits, to signal news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own, many of which are significant.